Skip to main content

The five bonds of Carbon

           I've come up to the third year of graduation and consider myself a grown up man. But this status was booked up in the registers long back ago in the July of 2010 when we were all promoted to the topmost level of the ladder we'd been building for past fifteen years of schooling. We were all in the senior most class. But as Uncle Ben said, "With great power comes great responsibility"; so did come big course, big subjects, bigger equations, bigger sums, bigger diagrams and along came bigger chiding, bigger beatings on making small mistakes. One such giver of big to small was our chemistry teacher, Mrs. Dixit.
           What a scary figure she was. A Humongous Deathtrap, wrapped in an Indian clean saree, which was just enough to cover her big belly. Her arms, sandwiched between a set of perfect biceps and triceps built over the years exercising on students' backs. Her voice had that Hitler quality of making one weep even on his own birthday. A figure so scary and serious that my hand gives a shaky handwriting as I try and recollect that year. I don't remember her ever smiling except for that one lucky farewell of ours. Even in our group photograph, her face, has that neutral curve(or line) with an intense eyebrow impression. She was so serious that we gave her everyday background stories. Like this one time, she came and turned half the class out as we were not able to write cannizaro reaction; so we deduced that this day she killed her seventh husband and this was a kind of celebration for her.
           My entire class of 2011 has stories, stories of escape, or close enough escape, with her. My friend who was very scared of her would often cry after the lectures and wonder why did she come to this school. This one time, Ma'am gave six equations and everyone had to write it. Organic equations, nightmare with open eyes and Dixit Ma'am watching over. She even had a special seating arrangement where her "most beloved" people sat near the gallery in between the seats where she could give her "blessings". So I was a kind of lucky when I was made to sit inside. So I wrote a component, my neighbor copied and his neighbor and his neighbor copied. One component, arrow, another component. This was going well when the wandering spirit came and stood next. With just three components of the equation, Anas(the "most beloved one") was sneaking into the last component which he could not copy in time. Just two seconds she watched and even without saying anything, her "dhai-kilo-ka-hath"(from a movie) landed on his fragile back with a bang. Such serious she was. Once when she saw a girl( also a "beloved one") drawing five bonds of carbon, she pulled her not-so-long pony and gave a good tap on her head and yelled,"aapne carbon ke panch bond lagaye hain? sharam nahi a rahi aapko".
           I wonder if I had this injection( https://www.facebook.com/cadbury5star ) of curing seriousness at that time, I would've definitely dared for once to unwrap it and give it to her. I know one or two would not have been enough, but for generations to come, I would've definitely spent some money.

This is an entry into Cadbury's Contest #ConditionSeriousHai for indiblogger by Sudhir Swarup. 
 https://www.facebook.com/cadbury5star
Labels:

Comments

  1. GST Refunds Delhi13 April 2018 at 04:28

    Very great post. I simply stumbled upon your blog and wanted to say that I have really enjoyed browsing your weblog posts. After all I’ll be subscribing on your feed and I am hoping you write again very soon!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ode on an evanescent flower

In shades of pink and shades of white, As an armor of a plucky knight; At a certain point of day in time, Thou beauty of the summer, thou shine. Three days for the life you wait, Three days to come off your adolescent age; Three days until that green bud sprouts, Three days until your Beauty you flout. Awaiting a time long you once shine, At a morning that all, but you, whine; No sorrow no sign of meloncholy you show, Even though this life you live is miniscule of a blow. Thine head held high with pride, Thine salute to the sun, big smile; Thine beauty above all at prime, Thou Beauty of summer, thou shine. This is the pride that envies me above all, The pride in spite of a life so small; A day thou have, a day that's all, Then too you live life so gay, so tall. With the cheer thou spread across horizons wide, With colours which as the sun, or even bright; The lesson you teach across generations wide, A life lived large is a
18 comments
Read more

The Midway

This is my entry to  https://housing.com/lookup I've always wondered what could be that one thing that one could do towards well being of others without letting go off one's own interests. That may sound a bit anti-noble but that is what is true. There is a certain mentality which does not let a person go an extra mile against one's own direction. That is a kind of optimism ice always been searching, ironically on my own track. But that search of the midway ended in the summer of 2009 while I was in high school. That day was just like any other day. I dressed up for school on my regular morning routine and left the house for the taxistand. I luckily found a taxi even before reaching the stand. When the taxi reached the stand, the driver got down to gather more passengers. A usual action done in the morning hours by the kind. I sat near the window, looking out and breathing the morning freshness. At that time, I saw something. Something that sent a chill down my spine a
13 comments
Read more

Old letter, New envelope.

An old Physics teacher, the one whom I looked up to, once told me it doesn't matter what you know. What matters is if you can tell what you know. He was referring to my very disturbing habit of eating up steps while proving theorems. I always used to skip the very obvious steps thinking the examiner would know that I know. Not surprisingly, as it seems now, I lost marks here and there. But after that brief talk which was more of a lecture though, and a couple more, I realized what he was trying to tell and I did correct those mistakes. But today, four  or five later, I find the saying true, but in a different setting. Today we see people commenting on various political parties, their ideologies, social issues, their causes and criticism, preach feminism with blindfolded eyes, and propaganda of all sorts. These people sit in their comfort zones, in their warm rooms with phones and computers with thousands of rupees, with good internet facilities that too is not cheap in any existi
7 comments
Read more